


Comfort Me With Apples

by Phoebe_Zeitgeist



Category: Yami No Matsuei
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-26
Updated: 2012-07-26
Packaged: 2017-11-10 18:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/469210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phoebe_Zeitgeist/pseuds/Phoebe_Zeitgeist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Hisoka and Tsuzuki did on their unanticipated, but not wholly unearned, summer vacation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Comfort Me With Apples

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veleda_k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veleda_k/gifts).



There was a bowl of apples on Hisoka's table, surrounded and buttressed by the piles of open books, just at the edge of his reach. They were beautiful, red and dappled gold like sun through autumn leaves, and they were out of season in the mortal world. Tatsumi must have sent them from his own garden: he kept a tree, carefully tended, because heirloom apples were too expensive to buy. Hisoka, Tsuzuki reflected, got all the sympathy.

It was unfair, and it was particularly unfair because Hisoka wasn't even eating them. He might get around to it eventually -- it was fruit, not cake or pastry, Hisoka didn't actively avoid fruit as long as no one put sugar on it -- but Tatsumi's apples were best as soon as they were picked. By the time Hisoka thought to eat them their flavor would have faded, their yielding firmness gone to mush. It was wrong, and it would be an offense against the beauty and richness of the universe for Tsuzuki to be complicit in such waste —

Hisoka slapped the apple out of his hand before his fingers had quite closed around it. "Don't put that in your mouth, you idiot," he said. "Don't you ever learn anything?"

"Don't be so mean." Tsuzuki tried to sound wounded. Hisoka, being Hisoka, would know that the hurt was not entirely authentic, but that was no reason to refuse to play the game. "I learn plenty of things." Hisoka wasn't looking at him, but he ran his tongue over his lips anyway. "Just in the past few days, I've learned that you like it when I put . . . things in my mouth."

Hisoka snorted. "Some things." He did not blush, which Tsuzuki privately considered unfortunate. But it was inevitable, he supposed: Hisoka was a fast learner by anyone's standards. "Food discovered under suspicious circumstances, no. And you don't even like apples, unless somebody makes pies out of them."

"I never said I didn't like apples," Tsuzuki told him, for the sake of the game. "I said that apples are not _dessert_." It was an odd thing, though, because Hisoka was right: he didn't much like fresh apples. Not usually. But then, there were a lot of things that weren't usual just now, maybe that accounted for it. Accounted for the way the apples smelled, rich and sharp and sweet, better even than pastry, certainly better than the apple turnovers that had started all the trouble. 

If you wanted to call it trouble. Which despite everything (and admittedly, there was a lot of _everything_ ), Tsuzuki wasn't sure he did, not yet. He was a little surprised, when he thought about it, that Hisoka would want to call it trouble either. Yet here he was, sitting at a kitchen table that could surely have been put to better use, entirely focused on heaps of open books that Tsuzuki was sure changed their shape whenever he wasn't looking at them. And doing something to Tatsumi's apples, evidently. Something that prevented Tsuzuki from eating any. Clearly something had to be done.

He looked again at the books. It was surprisingly difficult. He could almost catch the books shapeshifting, with the very edges of his vision: almost, but not quite. He focused his attention on a single volume, willing it not to move. Hisoka had left it open, and piled other volumes carelessly on top of it, but part of a page was uncovered at the bottom of the pile. It showed an illustration of an apple, beautifully painted, red and mottled gold like Tatsumi's apples.

He moved to look more closely at it, and something struck at his fingers as they moved: something sharp and deadly cold. He heard himself yell as he pulled his hand back, and saw the pages of the book nearest his hand uncurling and settling innocently back into place, the red of his blood vanishing into the red dye of their edges. 

"What?" Hisoka said, still absorbed in whatever he was reading.

"It _bit_ me," Tsuzuki said. He put the wounded fingers in his mouth and sucked at them.

"Of course it did, you --" Hisoka finally looked up, and the words came to a choking halt. He stared for a long moment. His hands clenched hard; he took a long breath and spoke to the books in a rigid monotone; then he was on his feet, sweeping Tsuzuki up as though he were weightless, and carrying him the few short meters from kitchen to bedroom.

* * * 

It had been this way since the turnovers -- or more accurately, whatever Watari had laced the turnovers with -- had taken effect. _Look, just try it,_ Watari had said, as he had said so often before. _Please? I'll make it worth your while. I'll buy you pastry for a month. Besides, you know it probably won't do anything._ Tsuzuki did know that; he and Watari had been making arrangements like this for almost a quarter-century now, and only twice had Watari's concoctions had any effect on him at all. It was an old joke, a ritual, as well as a favor you did for a friend. So Tsuzuki had laughed and said yes, and eaten the turnover while Watari watched him eagerly (and a very good turnover it had been, too, with an apple-and-cinnamon filling that had effectively hidden any more suspicious flavors). Watari had hovered over him the rest of the afternoon, as always, watching for his experiment to have some sort of effect. And as always, the working day had come to an end, and there had been nothing to show that there had been anything at all unusual in the pastry.

But later in the evening he had begun to feel odd, odd enough to more than make a fair excuse to invite himself to Hisoka's apartment for the evening. Before he left his own house, he knew that something was wrong, and by the time he reached Hisoka's door he knew what it was. He knew: but there Hisoka was, in all his wary delicate beauty, and all the familiar longing swept through him -- only it was different, somehow, his body was doing something new -- and instead of retreating or blushing or calling him an idiot, Hisoka was staring, his mouth open a little. Then Hisoka had _growled_ , deep in his throat, and picked Tsuzuki clean off his feet like a groom carrying a bride over the threshold, and kicked the door shut behind them.

It had all been extremely satisfactory, and while there would certainly be consequences — there were always consequences, Tsuzuki had learned that, just as he had learned that it was often best not to worry about them too much in advance — it seemed likely that they would be trivial in this case. He (and it was impossible to think of himself as _she_ , despite current circumstances) had never shared Watari's interest in altering his gender, but this was temporary: Watari would have made sure of having a way of reversing it. And meanwhile it was interesting, and the unanticipated side benefits were excellent. And there was nothing about it that should affect his daily life in any substantial way: he was still himself, just shaped a bit differently than usual. So he had gone into work the next morning whistling happily, wearing clothes that did not quite fit properly but covered all the essentials, and gone directly to the lab so that Watari could see the results of his experiment.

 * * *

Watari had had champagne: an old, old bottle. "I bought this bottle when I started this project, to open the day I succeeded," he had said, even as he produced it with a flourish from one of the laboratory refrigeration units. "It's probably no good now. Let's find out." 

It had been very good. Tsuzuki had grinned, and toasted him, and they had finished the bottle, laughing, before Watari sobered a little and said, "I suppose you want to change back now?"

Tsuzuki heard the resigned anticipation of disappointment in his voice, though Watari was obviously doing his best to hide it. "Is there a reason not to?" he said.

"No," Watari told him. "Only, after all this time, I'd be happier if we gave it a little more time. Run some medical tests, see whether the results are the same today and tomorrow. If you were having any discomfort, or it seemed to be doing you any harm, that would be a reason to stop it immediately. But if you aren't . . ."

And he had sounded so plaintive that Tsuzuki thought he might have agreed even if he had not already been considering the advantages of keeping his current form for a little while longer. At least, for another night. Besides, the office had been laughing at Watari and his doomed obsession for decades now, and it seemed only fair to give his friend the opportunity to show them all he had been right, after all. "Not a problem," he told Watari. "I'd better go and sit at my desk, so Tatsumi knows I'm not slacking off. Want to come watch the fireworks?"

* * * 

There were fireworks, but at first they seemed not only manageable but gratifying, in the way of a particularly successful practical joke. Tatsumi, emerging from his office to speak to Tsuzuki about the details of his expense reports, actually blushed at the sight of him, then stumbled backward three steps, tripped over a tattered edge of carpeting, and lost his glasses. Tsuzuki knelt to retrieve them and give Tatsumi an arm up, and Tatsumi, confronted with an unexpectedly-shaped chest in his face, mumbled an apology and fled, taking the disputed expense sheets with him. "I could live with this," Tsuzuki told Hisoka, staring after him. 

"It won't last," Hisoka observed. "He'll come back, and he'll complain about your shirt being too tight." But the edges of his mouth twitched as he said it, which was as good as a fit of giggles from him. 

"Is my shirt too tight?" Tsuzuki asked him.

"No," Hisoka told him, and now there was an actual, fleeting smile. "No, definitely not. At all."

That was Kannuki's opinion, too, when she arrived an hour later, summoned from a routine examination of the integrity of the Suzaku Gate by the irresistible power of office gossip. "The buttons are in the wrong places for you, though," she told him earnestly. "That's why they popped open when you picked up his glasses." She frowned a little, looking at him. "Nothing I have would fit you, you're a lot bigger than I am. Are you going to be like this for a while? Maybe I could take you shopping."

"Right, with all his spare money," Hisoka said. "Or maybe Tatsumi will find extra in the budget for it."

Kannuki sighed. ". . . Or maybe you could just try wearing a t-shirt instead." 

 * * *

"With a suit jacket over it," she added, some hours later, when Tsuzuki, having decided to follow her advice (the buttons of his dress shirt popping open was funny, but it was also kind of annoying), returned wearing a sleeveless t-shirt. 

"What for?" Hisoka said. He had stopped even pretending to work. "It looks _great_ like that."

"Yeah, the kid is right," Terazuma called from the doorway. He had stopped there, and was leaning against the doorframe, looking Tsuzuki up and down. "It's perfect. You should stay that way, Tsuzuki, you're finally adding some real value to this office." Then his eyes turned bright red, and Kagan Kuroshuki came out.

"Go," Kannuki told them, turning toward her partner. "I don't know, maybe if you're not in the same room — "

"Whatever helps," Hisoka told her. He grabbed Tsuzuki's wrist. "Come on. I'm thinking, broom closet."

"Oh," Tsuzuki said, suddenly very willing to be pulled. "Yes, of course. Safest place. Only responsible thing to do."

 * * *

"I missed the fireworks," Tsuzuki said, after Kannuki had knocked on the closet door to tell them it was safe to come out again. "I told Watari there would be fireworks."

The office was a smoldering ruin. Desks were overturned, papers charred, and one of the light fixtures had crashed down in the middle of the room. "Don't laugh," Hisoka warned him. "Tatsumi's going to charge the damage to _somebody_." 

"But I didn't do it," he said, with the horrified indignation of the unjustly accused. Things were almost always his fault, one way or another; it was only fair that he be allowed to enjoy one of the rare occasions when something wasn't.

"I know. I'll tell them so," Hisoka agreed. "Do you think it will matter?"

Tsuzuki considered it. "It might. If I'm not the first person Tatsumi sees when he finds this." He checked the clock, which dangled from a wrenched wire but seemed to still be running accurately. "We could try to clean things up around our desks, get what remains of our work back in order. That would be very responsible of us. Want to go out for lunch?"

"Yes." Hisoka rummaged under the twisted remnants of his chair and came up with his jacket. It was smudged, but looked intact. "If somebody decides to blow up the rest of the building, that way it definitely won't be our fault."

* * * 

Tatsumi was looking for them when they returned, but taking everything into consideration, it was something of a relief to find that it was to call them into the Chief's office for a briefing on a new case. Two unscheduled deaths in Nagasaki, Konoe told them, and the souls of the dead lingering in Chijou, seemingly tethered to something that wandered through the city, casting a sickness where it went. EnMaCho suspected demonic activity; stopping it and collecting the souls was a priority. 

"We'll leave at once," Tsuzuki said. "Well, almost at once." The joke was all very well, but this was work, and it had to take precedence. "I'll just stop by the laboratory first, and get Watari to change me back." And that was another thing: where was Watari? He would normally be at a briefing like this one, to handle any technical questions about the nature of the suspected demon, and the binding or rebellion of the missing souls.

"An excellent idea, but I'm afraid that will not be possible," Tatsumi said. He twitched and averted his eyes from Tsuzuki. "I was unable to contact him during this morning's . . .unfortunate incident with Kagan Kuroshuki, so I checked the laboratory myself. I discovered him asleep on the floor. We can't wake him."

There was a long silence. "He tried whatever he gave Tsuzuki on himself," Hisoka said, at last. "He saw it had worked on his first subject, and he didn't want to wait for long-term results."

"That seems likely, yes."

"And of course, there are no lab notes anyone can find." For the first time, irritation was beginning to bleed through Hisoka's voice. 

"There might have been," Tatsumi answered. Now it was his turn to sound weary. "When I found him, there was a flask over a lit burner, with a little dark liquid remaining in its bottom. The rest had bubbled over onto a notebook on the counter next to it. It may eventually be possible to reconstruct what those notes said." 

"But wait," Tsuzuki said. It was all too plausible that Watari had been too impatient to wait for further observations of the potion's effect on its first successful subject before trying it for himself. But if so, this result made no sense. "If this is what it did to me, why wouldn't it do the same thing to him?"

"Maybe because you have purple eyes, and he doesn't?" Hisoka said, impatiently. It was as delicate a reference to Tsuzuki's possible demon blood as he could have hoped for, and he did his best not to flinch. "It could be anything," Hisoka added. "Individuals respond differently to medications, it happens all the time, everyone knows that. It was stupid for him to risk it."

Tatsumi had raised his eyebrows. "'Everyone knows that'?" 

It was dangerous territory for Tatsumi to explore, and Tsuzuki felt himself tense. But Hisoka only shrugged, seemingly untroubled. "Everyone who knows any medicine," he said. "I spent years in hospitals before I came here. There are things you learn."

"In any case, right now that's a secondary issue," Konoe said. "The possibility that a soul-collecting demon is loose in Nagasaki has to be treated as an emergency. Addressing your current condition, desirable as that might be, can wait until this matter is resolved. Unless you have some further disability that we should be aware of?"

"No," Tsuzuki told him. He would have been glad to have the excuse to hand the case off, but it would be unfair. Nagasaki was his territory, and besides, of all of them he was the strongest, the one who would be in the least danger if there truly were a demon walking free in his city. "I feel fine. And I don't see why it would make a difference to dispatching demons, anyway. I'll go." 

* * * 

Under normal circumstances, Watari would have tracked the energy signature of the suspected demon for them, and they would have had a specific location in which to start their search. As it was, the best they could do was to call up reports from the living world, showing reports of the mysterious illness. It was imprecise, but better than wandering aimlessly through the city, hoping for a taint in the spiritual energies swirling through the streets that might lead them to their target. 

"Konoe wanted a last word with me," Hisoka said, returning from Tatsumi's office with the last run of hospital reports. "He was very fatherly, and very embarrassed. But he wanted me to know that if we have to spend much time in Chijou, and it becomes expedient, he and Tatsumi agree that the budget can be made to cover the cost of finding you something to wear that would be a little less conspicuous."

Tsuzuki laughed. "And you took the money and intend to use it for food. I hope."

"I told him I'd take it into consideration," Hisoka said. "But I'm not sure that there's much point. It's not your clothes that are the problem."

"What problem?" Tsuzuki asked.

Hisoka rolled his eyes. "You don't know? No, of course you don't. Never mind, maybe we'll be lucky and you never will."

* * * 

Half an hour in Nagasaki, though, and he was beginning to understand. He was used to people looking at him, when he assumed material form in the living world, but this was different. The attention was tangible and unpleasant; walking down the street was like walking though deep water, or a thicket of brambles. Men stared, and stopped, and wherever there were crowds hands patted and grabbed at him. He could perceive the signature of demonic energy, somewhere ahead of them, and that was his only consolation: the thing they were pursuing was careless. Probably they would find it soon, and then this would be over.

"You're not all right," Hisoka said, at his elbow. Hisoka, who growled and mocked and snarled when he pretended to be tired, to want to stop, to need to eat or sit in a park or visit a street festival on other, normal assignments: of course Hisoka would know. 

He could pretend to be fine, but it would be stupid, and insulting. "It's the people," he said. "It's like, every single guy in the world turned into Muraki while I wasn't looking." 

"Yeah," Hisoka told him. "I know. One reason I don't like crowds."

"It's always like this?" Tsuzuki shuddered. "It's worse than that, actually. If they had all turned into Muraki — " It occurred to him, belatedly, that it might have been insensitive of him to mention Muraki.

" — There'd be a decent chance that they'd kill each other, and save us the trouble," Hisoka finished for him, apparently untroubled by the reference. "Look, do you want to stop somewhere and get some cake or something? We can maybe find a table in a corner, and keep people away from you for a few minutes."

He did his best to smile. "I always want to stop and get some cake. Next place we find, okay? Until then we can stay on the scent."

It seemed like as good a short-term plan as any. Take a break, then power through this. Find the demon — he was increasingly sure that EnMaCho was right, it was a demon, and a dangerous one — dispatch it, and get back to Meifu, where he might have to do expense reports, but where he could count on people keeping their hands off him. But first, find a bakery, because pastry made everything better.

* * * 

"It's not your fault," Hisoka said. He sounded as if he believed it, but he always sounded as if he believed it, whether the words came out flat and declarative, as they did here outside Konoe's office, where they waited for the Chief to call them in and pass judgement on their conduct of their last mission, or whether Hisoka was shouting them at him in the course of an argument, or whether Hisoka was whispering them, with his fingers clenched over Tsuzuki's hands in a cold alley, with blood and corpses all around them. It was better to hear Hisoka's reassurances than not to hear them, and certainly better to think Hisoka believed them than to think he was trying to comfort Tsuzuki with lies. But he had heard them too many times in the past few hours, and just because Hisoka believed them did not, by itself, make them true.

"I could have stopped it." It was true enough, even if Tsuzuki hadn't been thinking clearly enough to act on it at the time. "Then you wouldn't have had to —"

"Shut up," Hisoka told him. "We don't know that. Tsusuki, we don't even know if the shiki would recognize you right now if you called them." He stopped, and looked down at the carpet. "And anyway that doesn't matter. I don't mind, can't you get that through your head? You're my partner, that means sometimes I get to protect you. You don't get to protect me from that, okay?"

_You have a right to mind_ , Tsuzuki wanted to say. But then Tatsumi opened the door to Konoe's inner office, and waved them forward and closed it behind them, and it was too late.

"This meeting will be private and not made part of the formal record," the Chief said, gesturing for them to sit. Tsuzuki realized abruptly that they were alone: Tatsumi had remained on the far side of the office door. "Now. I understand that the Nagasaki police are looking at the corpses of three humans and one demon, all of whom appear to have succumbed to more or less explosive cerebrovascular accidents." Konoe looked at his hands, then at them, and shook his head. "What the hell happened out there?"

Hisoka glanced sideways to Tsuzuki, and for the first time since their disastrous stop at the bakery he looked uncertain. "Well . . ." He began, and hesitated. "Two of the humans were in the bakery, and Tsuzuki bought a chocolate tart and ate it, and then they wanted to . . .talk to him," he said. He was beginning to blush. "They wanted him to go with them, and they followed us when we left. The third human was waiting outside the shop, I think he was a friend of theirs, and he joined them. We think that was what attracted the demon's attention. So all four of them were trailing us. We thought the best thing to do would be to lead them somewhere dark, where there wouldn't be civilians in the way. I think they had the same idea, really. Only they didn't want to wait. The humans, I mean.

"Tsuzuki did try to warn them off. They thought that was funny."

"I see." Konoe had closed his eyes as if he were in pain. "I don't think you need to elaborate any further. Do you?"

"No," Hisoka said, and his relief was clear in his voice. "No. Thank you, sir."

"All right, then." The Chief tapped the papers on his desk, and his voice was brisker now. "The incident has been reviewed by Lord Enma and at the Castle, and I can tell you that there will be no disciplinary proceedings arising from it. Your assignment was concluded successfully with your dispatch of the demon and recovery of the trapped souls, and by good fortune it appears that the three humans were actually on the kiseki. So their collection would have been appropriate even in the absence of any potential self-defense justification, and no further review is necessary. I expect your written reports to reflect all of that."

"Yes, sir," Hisoka said. "I'll make sure that they do."

"Very good." Konoe seemed to hesitate then, taking off his glasses and rubbing a spot between his eyes. "Then there is only one remaining matter." He glanced at Tsuzuki, fleetingly. "I mean, besides that one. Kurosaki: Just what did you _do_?"

Hisoka was looking fixedly at the floor now. "I don't know," he said. He shook his head a little, then raised it to meet the Chief's eyes. "I don't know."

"I thought you might say that," Konoe said wearily. "Off the record, Kurosaki: I would strongly advise that your report include some palatable explanation. _Strongly._ "

Hisoka nodded once more. "I see," he said. "I'll make sure of that, too. Thank you, sir."

* * * 

Tsuzuki made it as far as the staff break room before he spoke. It was empty, thank all the Powers. There was a single stale-looking doughnut in a box by the coffee machine, and he took it and slumped against the wall. "That last thing," he told Hisoka. "Was that about what I'm afraid it was about?"

"I can't imagine what else it was."

"What are you going to tell them?"

"What can I tell them? That I have strong spiritual powers, and apparently in moments of extreme emotional stress those powers are amplified and can be used in defense of my partner. It's true as far as it goes, it should be enough if I word it right."

"And if it doesn't happen again. At least for a while."

"Yeah. Well, I'm betting that they don't send us back out into the field for a while. One thing about this, we're probably going to finally get some time off. It's just a matter of how long it takes for there to be a formal announcement."

Tsuzuki sighed. "There should be an office pool. It's tradition. Watari always runs them, though, it doesn't feel right for me to do it."

"No. If there were a pool, though? I'd say we're off the clock by opening of business tomorrow." He took a long breath, as though steeling himself to something. "Tsuzuki . . . This can't go on."

It was not what Tsuzuki wanted to hear, not in the sense that Hisoka probably meant it. But it was true, and there was no point to refusing to admit it. "I know," he said. "I know."

* * * 

Hisoka's estimate was off. By sixteen and a half hours, if you counted the time outside of official working hours, or by half an hour if, as Hisoka insisted, only formal working hours counted. The memo calling a general staff meeting came out at four that afternoon, and the staff meeting convened at 4:30.  
"There are going to be," Konoe said forbiddingly, "a number of temporary reassignments."

Tsuzuki looked around the staff room. There were too many absences. Watari, of course. And Terazuma, who could not be in the same room with Tsuzuki: he and Kannuki were being teleconferenced in. Saya and Yuma, in transit and unreachable. 

His phone shook in his hand, almost imperceptibly. _Stop it,_ read the message. Hisoka, on the far side of the conference table, was looking through papers, for all the world as though he were unaware of Tsuzuki's presence in the room. _Just stop. It's Not. Your. Fault._

It would have been too hard to text back without being seen. Texting within meetings was a specialty of Hisoka's, and Tsuzuki had no idea how he managed it: did he have entire phrases programmed into his phone, so that he could compose messages for his partner under any circumstances with six taps? Certainly _stop it_ and _it's not your fault_ got enough of a workout to justify it. Fortunately, Tsuzuki had learned that he didn't have to. Hisoka read emotions, not minds, supposedly, but he seemed to read Tsuzuki's mind well enough for this. _Okay,_ he thought back, pouring as much as he could of his feelings about Hisoka's texting skills into the thought. _I get it. Stopping now._

Another shake from his phone. _Yeah, see that you do._ Then, a moment later, _You getting this?_

He was. Tatsumi, temporarily reassigned to the Kyushu block; field backup to be assigned as needed. The Hokkaido twins, temporarily reassigned to cover Watari's Sixth District and Terazuma and Kannuki's Fourth. Terazuma and Kannuki, temporarily reassigned to Hokkaido, where there was limited risk of casual contact between Terazuma and Tsuzuki.

Hisoka, temporarily reassigned to Tatsumi's position as Bureau secretary. And Tsuzuki, temporarily on administrative leave. "Which means that you're out of the field," Konoe concluded. "Both of you. Until this is fixed. And that means no recreational travel to Chijou. No festivals, no hot springs, no pastry shops. I trust that is entirely clear?"

"Entirely," Tsuzuki said, and for once he did not have to work to sound as if he meant it. "You can count on me. Wouldn't go if I could."

"I'm glad to hear it," Tatsumi said. There was an arctic chill in his voice, and Tsuzuki remembered just how much Tatsumi hated field work. "I trust that you will be able to use some of your unexpected desk time to bring all of your paperwork up to date. And Kurosaki, I will be grateful if you are able to limit your involvement with matters relating to the budget, interdepartmental affairs, personnel, and scheduling. And anything else that you might have any questions about. If you leave those matters aside, I will see that they are dealt with properly after hours, or when this situation is resolved."

Hisoka gave him what was almost a formal bow. "Of course," he said. "I am very well aware that I have no expertise in any of these matters, and I would be ashamed to take any actions that would disturb your arrangements in any way."

Tatsumi looked surprised, but his expression softened fractionally. "Thank you, Kurosaki. I appreciate that."

* * * 

"So what was that about?" Tsuzuki asked him afterward. "That business with Tatsumi."

"He doesn't want me in his office," Hisoka told him. "I don't blame him, I wouldn't either. Besides, I need a favor from him. Probably more than one. I need him to get me access to the restricted section in the library, for a start. Also, I'm beginning to wonder about what's in his garden."

"You have an idea?"

"No, not really," Hisoka admitted. "But I have free time, effective immediately. And I have an idea about where to start looking for one."

* * * 

"I'm missing something," Hisoka told him. "There should be a pattern I can see, and there isn't." 

It had been two days since Hisoka had been given temporary credentials for the Restricted section of the EnMaCho library. Hisoka had been right about how grateful Tatsumi would be for Hisoka's willingness to stay away from his office, Tsuzuki thought: there had been no difficulties about the request, no demands for explanations that might have proved awkward. Tatsumi had taken it, as best Tsuzuki could tell, as nothing more than an indication of Hisoka's need to somehow feel that he was helping the Bureau. The Restricted Section housed the dangerous items in the collection: the books of spells, the works on demonology, the volumes that were not books, but enchantments binding a single named Power, the books written in languages that would drive a human reader mad. But Tatsumi seemed content to allow Hisoka access to them, with no more warding than the Goushoshin could provide. Tsuzuki could only think that he assumed Hisoka was too weak to be able to handle the more potent works in the collection, or that he would confine himself to the outer edges of the collection, wasting his time harmlessly with the lesser volumes.

Or perhaps Hisoka had told him that he wanted to consult one particular book, something Tatsumi would recognize as harmless. It was something like that, it had to be. The only other possibility was that Tatsumi himself did not fully understand what the Restricted Collection housed. Hisoka would not have told him the full truth, and probably Tatsumi would not have believed him if he had. Whether it was a power derived from the marks Muraki had carved into his body or some native, late-blooming power of his own, Hisoka was becoming a sorcerer. 

It was a rare spiritual gift, rarer even than Tatsumi's gift of mastery over shadows, and one that was always held in some suspicion. In all Tsuzuki's years, he had never heard of an active sorcerer among the shinigami, and if there were any records they were sealed: it was something that was not spoken of. And if — when, Tsuzuki often thought, for such things could not be hidden forever — Hisoka's practice was discovered, there would be the additional suspicion of its link with Muraki, of the possible corruption of the power Hisoka wielded, of the possible corruption of his loyalties. It was not forbidden; if he had been discovered, Hisoka could have rightly argued that he was doing no more than following the advice given to all new shinigami: that they find and cultivate their own individual strengths, and learn to use them to their best advantage in the field. But Hisoka's own instinct was to keep it hidden, as knowledge too dangerous to be spoken of openly, even with Tsuzuki.

He would have been happy to see Hisoka give this particular attempt up: all of EnMaCho was concerned about Watari, and paying attention to any and all efforts at waking him, and the risk of discovery was unusually high. Or, he would have been happy if anyone else seemed to be making any progress. Watari slept on, in apparent comfort, needing neither nutrition nor fluids. His eyes did not move under their lids, but his brainwaves were strong and steady. He should have woken, doctors from other regions of Meifu said, looking at the charts. He seemed entirely well. He could remain asleep, for all they could tell, for a hundred years.

"Are you sure that there should be a pattern?" he asked Hisoka. "Watari wasn't doing your kind of work, he wouldn't have known how. It wasn't a spell, it was some kind of potion or something."

"It doesn't matter," Hisoka said. "Whatever the form was, it was still a spell — I mean, look, it wasn't something like a drug. Those work on a cellular level, they change current processes in the body. Medicines don't go back and change your entire being, retroactively.

"Unless we're wrong about what he took," he added. "Maybe he could synthesize a drug that would send a shinigami into this sort of unbreakable sleep. But if it's the same thing he gave you, no. A drug can't do that, not even one made here. It's a spell. I just can't see it."

"Well, maybe you will. I hear that the team from London is beginning to reconstruct some of what was in that notebook." It seemed unlikely: if Hisoka had thought that the notebook was going to be any help, he would have been hanging over the team's shoulders himself, demanding updates. But it was all the encouragement he could think of.

"Maybe. More information is always at least potentially useful," Hisoka said restlessly. "Look, what was in that stuff he gave you, anyway?"

"I told you," Tsuzuki said. "I couldn't taste it. It was in a pastry."

"No, I know that. Don't worry about that. What was the pastry made of?"

"Apples," Tsuzuki told him, mystified. "Cinnamon, I think. And — you know, pastry. Flour and butter and salt, probably. Sugar. But mostly apples. Why?"

"Apples," Hisoka said. "Tatsumi has an apple tree in his garden." He was pacing now, two swift turns around the tiny kitchen. "I need to visit Chijou. It won't be more than an hour or two. Cover for me if you have to, say I went for a long walk or something."

"What's in Chijou?" Tsuzuki said. There was no point in arguing, that much was clear. If he said no, Hisoka would wait until he was out of sight and go anyway.

"Books," Hisoka said. "Books that we don't have."

Realization dawned, horribly. "You're not."

"I am. Tsuzuki, he's in San Francisco at a medical conference. He'll never even know."

"He will. The instant you come in range of his wards."

Hisoka rolled up one sleeve, to show Tsuzuki the writing flashing over his skin. "I have the keys. I _am_ the keys. Two hours, Tsuzuki, I swear."

"Hisoka." There was nothing, really, he could say; nothing he could do but laugh, and hope it would be all right. "If anyone insists on knowing where you are, I am telling them that you went to Chijou to steal Muraki's library. I am."

"Of course you are," Hisoka agreed. "I told you to cover for me, didn't I?" And he turned, and in three paces he was gone.

* * * 

"Those books," Tsuzuki said, "are going to tell Muraki you've been talking to them. They are not our friends." His fingers still stung, when normal wounds closed instantly and painlessly. It was not serious pain, but it was annoying, and a reminder of the thing's malice.

"They're not your friends, you mean," Hisoka told him. "You don't know how to talk to them. Do I try to summon your shikigami? I do not, because they would incinerate me, if they responded at all. You're right about one thing, though."

"Hmm?" 

"He's going to know you tried to handle one. You bled on it, and now your spiritual signature's all over it."

"Doesn't matter." It was hard to be too concerned about it, just now, with Hisoka's hands running over his breasts and down his back. "My blood's probably all over his house. And it serves me right. I shouldn't have tried to interrupt you, not that I mind succeeding."

"Were you trying to interrupt me? I thought you were trying to steal apples."

"I had a better idea. Why can't I eat them, anyway?"

"Because they have patterns in them. One side makes you taller, and the other makes you small. Watari was doing something with them, I don't know what yet, I don't think he did either." Hisoka's hands had wandered lower now, and his mouth hovered over Tsuzuki's right nipple. "— oh, dammit, Tsuzuki," he said. "Can we please talk about this later?"

* * *  

Hisoka was already up when Tsuzuki woke, and he had made breakfast. Tsuzuki could tell by the scents coming from the kitchen: eggs and butter, and tea, and to his wary surprise, apples. Hisoka was sitting at the kitchen table when he entered, an empty plate and a teacup in front of him. All the books but one were closed and sealed and piled to one side of the table. The one was all too familiar to Tsuzuki: it had red edges like blood, and a picture of an apple on the wide page. Hisoka looked up as he entered. "It's all right," he said. He sounded tired, but serene. "You can eat them now. Then I'm taking the books back, and then we can go speak to Tatsumi and the Chief."

He poured himself coffee, added sugar, and realized he was still afraid of the apples. He left them where they were and joined Hisoka at the table. "Can you wake Watari up?" he asked.

"I can't, probably," Hisoka told him. "But I think Tatsumi can. I know what happened, now."

 * * * 

"He used apples," Hisoka said. They were convened in Konoe's private office, only the four of them. "Apples have power of their own, because there are so many stories attached to them. I think he forgot that when he compounded his agent. Apples are associated with Aphrodite, it's a confusion with pomegranates but the association is still powerful, that's the element he intended to make active. That was the dominant quality for Tsuzuki, but he didn't think about the secondary associations. And he didn't think about where he got the apples."

Tatsumi was beginning to tap his pencil against the desk; Konoe's eyes were going blank. "But that's all background," Tsuzuki told them, and nudged Hisoka with his foot for good measure.

"Exactly. What matters now is that the effect on Watari was governed by a secondary association, one he hadn't considered. You know the European story "Snow White?"

Tatsumi nodded; Konoe shook his head. "The heroine eats a bite of an enchanted apple, and falls into a dreamless and unbreakable sleep, in which she is preserved unwithered, without need of food or water. The rest of the details don't really matter. The important part is, the story tells how to wake her. It's woven into the pattern."

Tatsumi's face had hardened as Hisoka spoke: he'd seen where this was going. "I knew you wouldn't like it," Tsuzuki told him.

"Because it's ridiculous," Tatsumi said, but the anger had drained from his face, leaving only quiet unhappiness. "Tsuzuki, it's a story for children. And when I had your message, I had hoped for something real."

"We're stories for children," Hisoka said. "We, and our enemies the demons, and the shiki, and the gods we serve. Stories are part of the web that binds the world together. This one is no sillier than others."

"And we wouldn't have bothered you with it," Tsuzuki added, "only there wasn't a choice. You have to be the one to do it."

"Gentlemen," Konoe said, into the silence. "Remember that I come from a different generation, and your popular culture is often unfamiliar to me. Perhaps one of you would be good enough to explain exactly what it is that you are proposing that Tatsumi do, and why he needs to do it?"

"Sorry, sir," Hisoka said. "It's going to sound silly, but it's very simple. Someone needs to kiss Watari to wake him up. And a prince is supposed to do it, so we think it needs to be Tatsumi. He's the only person on staff who comes of royal blood."

"And this is not, I take it, a particularly ill-conceived joke. Well, Tatsumi? I suppose it's your decision."

Tatsumi rose, his face set once more. "For the record, I still believe that this is ludicrous and a waste of everyone's time. It is, however, the only concrete suggestion anyone has come forward with so far. For that alone, I cannot argue that it is not worth the attempt."

"It's only a kiss," Tsuzuki said.

Something in the stone of Tatsumi's expression cracked a little. "Well, yes. There's that too. Let's go: I won't feel any less like a fool if we put it off."

* * * 

"Of course I had a way to change you back," Watari told him. "I can't believe you didn't find it immediately. It's been in the cabinet since I finished the first potion. Right here, in the flask with the apple label on it."

"And we would have known that how, precisely?" Hisoka asked. "No, forget I said that." His mouth quirked in its almost-smile. "I don't mean to complain. It's been interesting. And enlightening."

"You're forgetting 'fun,'" Tsuzuki added. He swirled Watari's concoction in its glass. "Not that I ever particularly wanted to be a woman instead of a man, but . . . How long do we have, before this takes effect?"

Watari snickered. "Worried about ripping through your clothes in public? You probably have about four hours. This'll be faster than the other, because you're reverting to a core state, not shifting into a new one."

"Then we're out of here," Hisoka said. "Wouldn't want to waste Tsuzuki's last four hours of admin leave hanging around the office. Come on, Tsuzuki: drink that and let's go home."

He raised the glass in a mock toast. "To admin leave," he said solemnly. "A terrible thing to waste." Melancholy would be foolish. It was better this way, and even if it wasn't, he had four hours that he ought not spend on the anticipation of regret.

* * * 

The transformation was complete at midnight. Tsuzuki felt the final moments, a sense of fluidity ending as decisively as a set of locks falling into place. "I should go home," he told Hisoka.

Hisoka muttered something, then propped himself up on one elbow, staring at him. "It's the middle of the night, you idiot," he said. "And you are home."

"But," he said. He did not want to intrude, or force anything on Hisoka, and things had changed, and there was no good way to say any of that. With luck, Hisoka would understand that, but he still owed it to him to try. "I know things are different now. So I thought —"

"You thought it was your breasts?" It was too dark to see his face, but Tsuzuki thought he sounded caught somewhere between amusement and exasperation: not a bad place, for Hisoka.

"Well," he tried, cautiously. "You seemed to like them."

"They were great breasts, Tsuzuki. Yeah, I liked them. If you ever have them back, I'll like them then, too. That's not the point."

"Isn't it? We never touched each other before I had them."

"So maybe it was a catalyst. Look." He could hear Hisoka sitting up, as though to lecture, and the amusement was stronger than ever in his voice. "Do you see me chasing after Saya or Yuma? There were plenty of opportunities this past week. Do you see me chatting up the girls in Chijou? Or cruising the staff in the Peace Division? No, Tsuzuki, you do not. Do you think I sound as though I'm only waiting to go do all of that right now? No, you do not. Now, can you imagine a reason why that might be?"

Tsuzuki could feel his smile, widening in the dark, and knew Hisoka would feel it too, or at least, feel all that was behind it. "Well," he said, pretending to consider. "Maybe, because it's not about the breasts?"

"Thank you, eternal Powers," Hisoka told the ceiling. "He gets it. It's you, idiot, not the shape of your body. Now will you please shut up and let us both get some sleep?"

It was a reasonable question, and it deserved a reasonable amount of consideration. Tsuzuki considered it. "No," he said, and rolled toward Hisoka.

"Well, fair enough," Hisoka agreed. "'No' works, too."


End file.
